Where to Stay in Scarborough, England

What is Scarborough known for?

Scarborough Castle holds the ridge between them, and below it the harbour keeps the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre and the Harbour Commissioners Lighthouse Museum, both given over to the fishing and shipping the town lived on. Beyond the shore, Scarborough turns to museums. The Rotunda Museum, the Scarborough Art Gallery and the Woodend Museum of Natural History hold the collections, and Alpamare Scarborough answers for the resort side of a wet afternoon.

North Marine Road Ground stages the cricket.

What are the main landmarks in Scarborough?

Scarborough Castle takes the headland. St Mary's Church stands below it, beside the ruins of St Mary's medieval church, and the Rotunda Museum, the Scarborough Art Gallery and the Woodend Museum of Natural History carry the town's collections between them. North Marine Road Ground stages the cricket.

St Martin-on-the-Hill, St Saviour's Church, the Church of St Laurence and St James with Holy Trinity Church account for much of the Victorian building, while Trinity House, Cliff End House and Scalby Manor survive from the same run of years. Alpamare Scarborough came much later.

What is the history of Scarborough?

Earthworks came first. Two linear earthworks on Row Brow run into Raincliffe Woods, a section of the same kind of boundary survives on Seamer Moor Hill, and two further segments lie near Beacon Farm, which together put people on this ground long before any town was laid out. Three barrows stand at Seamer Beacon.

Beside them are the ruins of Baron Albert's Tower, a far later addition to a hill that had been marked out for burial and boundary for a very long time already. Scarborough Castle holds the headland above the harbour, and the ruins and below-ground remains of St Mary's medieval church lie on the slope beneath it, with St Mary's Church still standing nearby. The sea paid for the rest.

Fishing and shipping built the harbour that the Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre and the Harbour Commissioners Lighthouse Museum now record, and the resort trade that followed lined the cliffs with confident Victorian hotels. Churches multiplied with the crowds. St Martin-on-the-Hill, St Saviour's Church, the Church of St Laurence, the Church of St Columba, the Church of St Andrew, Albemarle Baptist Church and St James with Holy Trinity Church stand across the town, a set of foundations that outnumbers anything the medieval parish left behind, and the Former Holy Trinity Church marks where the building stopped.

Trinity House and Cliff End House come from the same stretch. The Rotunda Museum, the Scarborough Art Gallery and the Woodend Museum of Natural History keep what the town has collected since.

Where is Scarborough?

Two sandy bays, divided by a headland, make the shape of the town. Scarborough Castle stands on that headland, with the harbour tucked under one side and sand running out from both. The ground climbs quickly inland.

Raincliffe Woods, Row Brow and Seamer Moor Hill rise behind the built-up edge, and Scalby Manor and Beacon Farm mark how far the town's ground reaches before the moor takes it. It is the largest town on the Yorkshire Coast.

What is the climate of Scarborough?

Water sets the terms on this coast, cooling the two bays through summer and keeping frost off the cliffs longer than it stays on the higher ground behind Seamer Moor Hill. The wind comes off the sea. Scarborough sits in the temperate band of the northern hemisphere, which gives it a wide swing of daylight between midwinter and midsummer and a beach season measured in weeks rather than months.

Rain spreads through the year.

How do you get to Scarborough?

Every approach comes over higher ground. Roads from inland cross the rising country behind Raincliffe Woods and Seamer Moor Hill before dropping to the bays, so Scarborough Castle and its headland appear all at once rather than by degrees. Sea traffic came first.

The Scarborough Maritime Heritage Centre and the Harbour Commissioners Lighthouse Museum record the shipping that once mattered more to the town than any road, and the harbour under the castle is still where visitors gather to watch it work.